
Biography
I am a wheat bioinformatician with wet lab molecular biology and fieldwork experience. I typically develop tools and pipelines to analyse next-generation sequencing datasets for mutant identification, gene expression and comparative analyses and for epigenetic studies. I am primarily focused on hexaploid wheat with the goal of understanding key adaptive traits in wheat and their development.
At EI I am working in collaboration with colleagues at the JIC, the USA and Germany on an ERA-CAPS funded project to understand the epigenome of wheat. In this project we are sequencing the full methylome of Chinese Spring wheat and observing how polyploid genome formation affects genome methylation. Currently I am using gene capture to analyze methylation and SNP variation across a diverse landrace population of wheat (the Watkins collection).
Before joining EI I completed my PhD at the University of Liverpool where I largely used gene capture, mapping and SNP calling in hexaploid wheat next-generation sequencing datasets for mapping-by-sequencing mutant identification and epigenetic studies in elite wheat varieties.
Publications
Related reading.

Finding fungi at the fen

The genetic machinery that drives biodiversity

On the origin of errors: the causes and consequences of mistakes during DNA replication

Could long-read RNA sequencing be the future of drug discovery?

Why is genome annotation important?

Why cloud computing is important for data-driven bioscience research

How bioinformatics can crack the complex case of protist biodiversity

The dramatic effects genomics will have on our future world

Key tilapia genome offers boost to global food security

Exotic wheat DNA could help breed ‘climate-proof’ crops

Sequencing project to unleash the huge potential of euglenoids

Circadian clock insights could be key to increased wheat yields

European consortium launched to reverse biodiversity loss through genomics research

Tracking bacterial evolution in real time spots emergence of antimicrobial resistance

Big Data initiative awarded £6.3 million as part of major UKRI investment in research infrastructure

Not all looks rosy for the pink pigeon
